Alley Cat News, a magazine that followed Silicon Alley's venture capital and start-up scene, has suspended operations, another victim of a difficult climate for ad dollars made worse in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Janet Stites, the president of New York-based Alley Cat Information Sciences, the publication's parent company, said she and editor-in-chief Anna Copeland Wheatley decided to shut down the operation in order to work on paying off creditors.

"The ad climate went from bad to worse after Sept. 11," she said, and efforts to pull in advertising dollars were subsumed by the operation's debt and obligations to creditors.

Bill Britt, the publisher, told atNewYork.com that the closure of the magazine was still before the board of advisors and that nothing official had been announced.

Although Stites and Wheatley founded the five-year-old publication and were responsible for its oversight, there was a chance, albeit a slim one, that Britt could continue to publish without their involvement.

"Lots of things are being considered. When I have more information, I'll comment further."

Alley Cat News sponsored a Women of Silicon Alley luncheon on Wednesday of this week during the Internet World conference. Topics for discussion at the event included "why women seem to have less access to venture capital, and, more importantly, how they can get it." The luncheon was dubbed by those who attended as Alley Cat's final event.

"The event was sold out, and people kept telling us how much they love Alley Cat," Stites said. "But they were also the same people who pulled back from advertising with us."

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In October, another independent publication about the Alley, Silicon Alley Reporter, said it would cease publication and re-launch as Venture Reporter, to cover venture capital in and outside the New York region. The development left many observers wondering whether there were enough ad dollars to go around for two publications covering similar ground.

"It's still a terrible market," Wheatley said at the time, while noting that the publication's core advertiser base was among professional services such as law and accounting firms, rather than on dot-com ad dollars that are never coming back.

Last July, the publication received a six-figure infusion of capital from investors and brought in Britt as publisher to replace Stites, who instead moved into the president's role to concentrate on business development.

AlleyCat had gone from monthly to bi-monthly as the ad climate worsened throughout the year; with the new funding in hand, Wheatley had planned to return Alley Cat to a monthly schedule by next year.

"This year, surviving is winning," she said at the time. "...AlleyCat's origins were always to follow the money, who's got it, who's looking."